In the late-1990s squalid town of Nalchik, a poor young Jewish couple is kidnapped and a grievous ransom is demanded, as bitter resentments and cruel dilemmas come to light, magnifying the small community's grave predicament.
1945, Leningrad. WWII has devastated the city, demolishing its buildings and leaving its citizens in tatters, physically and mentally. Two young women search for meaning and hope in the struggle to rebuild their lives amongst the ruins.
Acid is a silent manifesto of the generation of twenty-year-old. They have been abandoned in a world adorned with concepts such as family, friendship, love, and opportunities. In search of ... See full summary »
Director:
Aleksandr Gorchilin
Stars:
Filipp Avdeev,
Aleksandr Kuznetsov,
Aleksandra Rebenok
Contemporary Russia. A high school student becomes convinced that the world has been lost to evil, and begins to challenge the morals and beliefs of the adults around him.
Director:
Kirill Serebrennikov
Stars:
Pyotr Skvortsov,
Viktoriya Isakova,
Yuliya Aug
A woman lives in a small village in Russia. One day she receives the parcel she sent to her husband, serving a sentence in prison. Confused and angered, she sets out to find why her package was returned to sender.
Director:
Sergey Loznitsa
Stars:
Liya Akhedzhakova,
Valeriu Andriuta,
Roza Khayrullina
Egor is a vet at a training facility for hunting dogs in a remote region of the country. Surrounded by foxes, deer, badgers, and dogs, he lives in a small building next to the house of the ... See full summary »
Director:
Nataliya Meshchaninova
Stars:
Stepan Devonin,
Dmitriy Podnozov,
Yana Sekste
Karabas (Asset Imangaliev) is a difficult man: a hard-gambling, hard-drinking, child-in-a-man's body who puts only himself first in his family. When his wife #1, Zhipara (Perizat ... See full summary »
Director:
Elizaveta Stishova
Stars:
Daniel Daiyrbekov,
Turgunai Erkinbekova,
Perizat Ermanbetova
A young man drops out of university and goes to the police. He's done nothing wrong he just wants a job. A particular job. Playing the victim in murder reconstructions. Maybe by getting close to death he can manage to cheat on his own.
1998, Nalchik. A Jewish family is in trouble: the youngest son and his bride do not come home, and in the morning, a ransom note arrives. The ransom is so high that the family is forced not only to sell its small business, but also to seek help from its fellow tribesmen.Written by
rurban
A really interesting debut from Balagov that earned him the favour of critics at the Cannes film festival in 2017.
This movie represents a very deep dive in the patriarchal culture, permeating Russia and North Caucasus in general, how the women struggle with the lack of ability to choose their own path, the way they are treated by their parents and everyone around them. At the same time, it is also a dive into the idea of toxic mother's love, that gets overbearing and, at times quite literally, to the point of choking the children.
Also, about the violence, which some of the previous rewires have deemed unnecessary - unfortunately, it was necessary, as it drives the plot and the ethnic conflict between the native ethnicities of North Caucasus and everyone else. It is also an important contextual detail to understanding why the family feels alienated.
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A really interesting debut from Balagov that earned him the favour of critics at the Cannes film festival in 2017.
This movie represents a very deep dive in the patriarchal culture, permeating Russia and North Caucasus in general, how the women struggle with the lack of ability to choose their own path, the way they are treated by their parents and everyone around them. At the same time, it is also a dive into the idea of toxic mother's love, that gets overbearing and, at times quite literally, to the point of choking the children.
Also, about the violence, which some of the previous rewires have deemed unnecessary - unfortunately, it was necessary, as it drives the plot and the ethnic conflict between the native ethnicities of North Caucasus and everyone else. It is also an important contextual detail to understanding why the family feels alienated.